o A low caloric diet is a self-imposed famine, so the body responds byconserving fat and begins to break down muscle tissue for fuel. It doesn’t know how long this famine is going to last so it guards its precious high energy store.

o Nitrogen is released when you break down muscle and the body quickly eliminates it through the kidneys with water from your cells. This causes an immediate reduction in water weight and a noticeable drop on the scale. Losing water and muscle is no reason to celebrate.This weight will be right back as soon as you have something to drink, and the missing muscle lowers your metabolism.

o Muscle tissue burns calories 24 hours a day. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn even when you’re just sitting around. The less muscle you have the less you can eat. Okay hold on here comes a little math! Suppose, for example, that a you lose 10 pounds of muscle (along with maybe 20 lbs. of fat) on a low caloric diet. Now suppose that each pound of muscle had been burning 50 calories a day just sitting there. Together, those 10 pounds of muscle had been burning 500 calories a day.

With this muscle tissue gone, the you must now consume 500 fewer calories a day in order to maintain that weight-loss.Your job just got harder.Here’s where it really gets tragic.When you ease up on your diet, your body goes “Finally some food, but I’m scared another famine’s coming.” So what does it do? It puts on fat stores before it puts on muscle! Even at the same weight you’re fatter than ever with less muscle to burn it!